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The main purpose of this study is to explore the effect of three dimensions of “home feeling” – home-as-practical, home-as-social and home-as-attachment – on the online rating of homestays and additionally considers the accommodation’s attribute performance and level of sharing.

To achieve the research aims, more than 9,738,335 items of user-generated content concerning 743,953 Airbnb listings covering 35 cities were collected as the study data. These data are analyzed through hierarchical regression.

The results show that all three dimensions of home feeling positively affect the online rating; all three dimensions negatively moderate the relationship between attribute performance and online rating; the size of the moderating effect of each dimension on the relationship between attribute performance and online rating gradually increases in the order home-as-practical, home-as-social and home-as-attachment; and as the level of sharing increases, the moderating effect of home feeling on the relationship between attribute performance and online rating diminishes.

This study contributes to the literatures on the role of home feeling in homestays, the online rating of homestays and the motivations of guests who choose different room types. The findings of this study can help hosts better understand the formation of online rating of homestays, make targeted improvements in rooms and services and create a home feeling for specific degrees of sharing. This in turn will help them to improve the online rating of their homestays, establish an excellent online reputation and, ultimately, increase sales.

This study advances knowledge by confirming three dimensions of home feeling not only have direct positive impacts on online rating but also mitigate the impact of attribute performance on online rating. This effect differs significantly in magnitude with the degree of sharing.

Growing health concerns amid the COVID-19 pandemic have led guests to focus on various aspects of hotel cleanliness. This study aims to investigate whether customers’ perceived importance of hotel cleanliness during their stay depends on local pandemic severity and moderators of the pandemic–cleanliness relationship.

Based on TripAdvisor data from 26,519 reviews in 2020 for 2,024 hotels across the USA, this study evaluated the importance of hotel cleanliness using the estimated coefficient of the cleanliness score in a regression of overall hotel rating scores.

Results of a multilevel ordered logit model confirmed that a more difficult local pandemic situation rendered cleanliness more important during hotel stays. Additionally, the effect of the pandemic was more pronounced among specific groups: men and travelers with more expertise, and guests staying in hotels without COVID-19 protocols for linen cleaning, with a lower average rating, with a larger size and in a more urbanized location.

This study represents a pioneering effort to assess how pandemics shape people’s (perceived) importance of cleanliness during hotel stays based on revealed data. Despite potential managerial relevance, a number of the moderating variables included in this study, such as traveler expertise and hotel location, have never been studied within the context of cleanliness perceptions during a pandemic.

From the perspective of two-sided review systems, this study aims to investigate how guests’ prior reputation influences their subsequent satisfaction on Airbnb.

This study applied a conceptual framework based on social capital theory to explain the effect of guests’ reputation decided by hosts’ prior evaluations on their subsequent satisfaction. The authors collected 96,204 guest reviews posted for 17,325 properties on Airbnb and used the review polarity to measure guest satisfaction. All historical evaluations generated by hosts for each guest were collected and treated as a proxy of guest reputation. Ordinary least squares regressions were conducted to estimate the effect of guests’ reputation on their subsequent satisfaction.

Results show that guests whose historical evaluations have higher valences or larger variations tend to be more satisfied in their subsequent bookings. However, the number of reviews that guests received from hosts in the past does not influence their subsequent satisfaction.

This study provides new insights into the hospitality literature by identifying the influencing factors of guest satisfaction on peer-to-peer rental platforms from the perspective of two-sided review systems. Results also present practical implications to property owners and website designers to gain a deeper understanding of the determinants of guest satisfaction and the consequences of social interactions between hosts and guests.

This study is a novel attempt that analyzes the effect of guests’ reputation on their satisfaction with subsequent bookings based on two-sided review systems on peer-to-peer rental platforms. Thus, this study provides a starting point for investigating how two-sided review systems affect use behavior on peer-to-peer rental platforms.

Sustainable tourism is becoming more popular all over the world. Eco-friendly (green) hotels are properties that are friendly to the environment and are becoming increasingly popular among green travellers. Electronic word-of-mouth is a technique of communicating with consumers in order to share their experiences, and it is a significant marketing tool for hotels. This paper aims to identify the main themes shared in online reviews by tourists visiting eco-friendly hotels, and which of these themes were associated with satisfaction and dissatisfaction ratings.

The research used qualitative content analyses to analyse 1,202 user-generated content of the top 10 hotels in UK shared by guests on an online platform.

The analyses revealed nine themes in descriptions of airline travel experiences. These are “hotel amenities”, “services”, “location”, “staff”, “eco” (eco-friendly activities), “value” and “recommend/revisit” (intentions). Negative comments are associated with the “bathroom”, “mattress”, “water”, “bed”, “price”, “shower”, “Wi-Fi” and “restaurant” concepts.

This study differs from previous research in which it aims to address a void in the literature on the shortcomings of research focused on finding the dominant themes expressed in online reviews by tourists visiting eco-friendly hotels, and it does so using data mining approach.

Given the importance of performance consistency of chain hotels in customers’ decision-making and service evaluation, this study aims to explore how consistently chain hotel brands offer quality service and carry out their performance from the eyes of customers through online reviews on TripAdvisor of the top five US hotel chains (i.e. Choice, Hilton, InterContinental, Marriott and Wyndham) and their brands.

The research objectives were achieved through methodological triangulation: business intelligence, data visualization analytics and statistical analyses. First, the data collection and pre-processing of consumer-generated media (CGM) (i.e. TripAdvisor online reviews) were performed using business intelligence for further analyses. Using data visualization analytics (i.e. box-and-whisker plot by region and brand), the geographic patterns of performance attributes (i.e. online review ratings, including location, sleep, cleanliness, room and service) were depicted. Using a series of analyses of variance and regression analyses, the results were further assessed for the impacts of brand performance inconsistency on consumers’ perceived value, sentiment and satisfaction.

The empirical results demonstrate that there are significant performance inconsistencies in performance attributes (location, sleep, cleanliness, room and service) by brands throughout the six regions in the US hotel market. More importantly, the findings confirm that brand performance consistency significantly influences consumers’ perceived service quality (i.e. perceived value, satisfaction and sentiment).

This study is one of the first attempts to empirically explore hotel brand performance consistency in the US hotel market from customer reviews on CGM. To measure hotel brand performance in the US hotel market, this study collected and analyzed user-generated big data for the top 5 US hotel chains through business intelligence, visualization analytics and statistical analysis. These integrated and novel research methods would help tourism and hospitality researchers analyze big data in an innovative data analytics approach. The findings of the study contribute to the tourism and hospitality field by confirming hotel brand performance inconsistency and such inconsistent performance affected customers’ service evaluations.

This study demonstrates the significant impact of hotel brand performance consistency on consumers’ perceived value, emotion and satisfaction. Considering that online reviews are perceived as a credible source of information, the findings suggest that the hotel industry pays special attention to brand performance consistency to improve consumers’ perceived value, emotion and satisfaction.

More hotels are beginning to embrace green practices given increasing awareness of sustainable development. The purpose of this study is to examine factors contributing to hotels’ participation in TripAdvisor’s GreenLeaders program.

Based on a sample of 48,064 hotels from 328 destinations in 29 countries, the authors leverage a multi-level logit model to examine antecedents of GreenLeaders participation. A multi-level ordered logit model is then estimated to uncover factors influencing the ranking of this participation.

Empirical results indicate that hotels with a larger size, a higher class, a better online reputation, greater reliance on business travelers, fewer neighboring hotels and a more long-term-oriented culture are more apt to join the program. Online reputation factors, hotel size and the number of neighboring hotels explain GreenLeaders hotels’ rankings. A series of robustness checks reinforces the results.

The results shed light on green program design and promotion. These findings can help hotel practitioners identify ideal target markets and better use their organizational resources to establish green programs. Several strategies can be implemented to promote hotels’ commitment to sustainability and to encourage guests’ awareness of and involvement in green practices.

This study enriches knowledge of sustainable hospitality and tourism. The findings of this study also address corporate social responsibility by analyzing factors that can promote and inhibit GreenLeaders program participation. Further, as a complement to hotel- and location-specific factors, the authors scrutinize the effects of cultural features in shaping green strategies.

Customer reviews on online platforms after their service experience not only provide useful information to help other customers make reasonable decisions about the hotel, but also provide a great opportunity for scholars to refresh the research directions on customer experience and satisfaction in tourism services. This paper aims to discover the key driver of international tourist satisfaction in the hospitality service and the way to effectively improve this factor, starting with the abundant online customer reviews.

A multi-perspective approach was used to compare the differences in service providers and service user’s interpretation of the factors that shape customer satisfaction. In addition to content analysis of nearly 2,500 online reviews of international tourists for 21 high-class hotels in Vietnam on Booking.com in 2019, the authors conducted in-depth interviews with the managers of 5-star hotels to show a comprehensive picture of customer satisfaction drivers, especially the staff factor.

The research results have clarified the main aspects of the staff – the most important service factor among the seven hotel service factors investigated from the customer’s perspective. On the other hand, the study also emphasized the gap between customers’ perception of the staff and the enterprise’s efforts and implementation of this factor. These findings allowed to identify aspects of staff that could be further improved to more effectively satisfy customers and provide a superior experience.

The study suggested a potential research direction using a multi-perspective approach to better understand trends and shifts in customer experience and satisfaction. Further studies could overcome the limitation of the research scope of this paper by examining different destinations or expanding the exploration of both mid-range and budget hotels.

The findings offer implications for managers to improve tourist satisfaction by developing organizational culture and mindfulness-related training programs for employees.

This study has enriched the literature of tourism and hospitality services by providing empirical evidence on the exploitation of big data sources and deepening the insights into international tourist satisfaction with hotel services.

This study aims to integrate reviewers’ and readers’ discrepant perspectives on extremely negative reviews. Specifically, this study examines the relationship between negative emotion intensity levels and reviews helpfulness on two platforms: integrated websites and social networking sites (SNS) to emphasize the role of platform types on customers’ purchase decisions.

This research adopts a mixed-method approach of business intelligence approach and quasi-experimental design. Study 1 performed text mining and Welch’s t-test to compare reviewers’ negative emotion intensity levels on two platforms. Study 2 adopted a 2*2 factorial quasi-experimental design to examine how intense negative emotions impact the perceived reviews helpfulness on two platforms. A 3*2 factorial design in Study 3 also tested social tie strength’s moderating effect between the intensity of negative emotions and review helpfulness.

The current study reveals that integrated website reviewers tend to express more extreme negative emotions than SNS reviewers. SNS and integrated website readers deem reviews that embed severe negative emotions as less helpful. The moderating role of social tie strength between extremely negative emotions on review helpfulness was insignificant in the study.

This study enriches the online review literature by comparing writers’ and readers’ perspectives on online reviews with extremely negative emotions across two online platform types: integrated websites and SNS. From the writers’ perspective, this study highlights anonymity and the presence of an audience as essential factors that reviewers consider in selecting an online review platform to express themselves. This research also sheds light on how readers’ perspectives on extremely negative reviews conflict with the presumptions of writers of extremely negative reviews on integrated websites by demonstrating that content embedding extremely negative emotions is less helpful regardless of platform type.

This research provides online negative review management strategies to platform and hotel managers. The findings suggest hotel and review platform managers should consider adopting review alignment or monitoring systems based on negative emotions intensity levels since readers on both platforms perceive reviews embedding extremely negative emotions as less helpful. Additionally, hotel managers can progress promotions to guests who share online reviews on SNS since SNS reviewers are more likely to attenuate their extremely negative emotions when writing reviews.

This research innovatively provides a comprehensive overview of negative reviews’ production and consumption process from reviewers’ and readers’ perspectives. This research also provides practitioners insight into the nature of two different platform types and the management of negative reviews on these platforms.

Photos are powerful tools to attract individuals’ attention and convey service experiences. Yet exactly how visual cues in a photo contribute to the perceptions of the staged servicescape, and how these perceptions inspire online booking/reservation behaviors, remains underexplored. Addressing the gap, this study aims to uncover (1) how perceptual information mediated by an online photo contributes to the formation of consumers' holistic perceptions of the service environment and (2) how such consumers' holistic perceptions further influence customers' online purchasing behaviors.

This research adopts an innovative crowdsourcing approach and refers to field data on consumers' online hotel booking behaviors to examine relationships among inferred servicescape dimensions, consumers' holistic perceptions of the mediated servicescape and their actual online booking/reservation behaviors (e.g. page-view and meta-click behaviors).

Confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis indicated that five mediated servicescape dimensions (i.e. color, lighting, furnishings, layout and style) contribute significantly to consumers' perceptions of the mediated servicescape (CPMS) and exert different impacts on CPMS. Connecting the crowdsourced rating and consumer behavioral data, CPMS is found to influence consumers' aggregated page-view and meta-click behavior, especially in the US market.

Building upon servicescape theory, the medium theory and the online booking literature, this research proposes a novel conceptual framework of CPMS to theorize the process by which visual cues in online photos contribute to CPMS and subsequent online purchase behaviors. Findings from this research extend Bitner's servicescape framework to mediated service contexts and provide practical implications for promoting service businesses.

The main goal of this paper is to identify the attributes of consumer experience in Michelin-starred restaurants and to estimate their effects on restaurant ratings.

A sample of 70,233 online reviews of 224 Spanish Michelin-starred restaurants were analysed with the latent Dirichlet allocation algorithm. A sentiment analysis and a logistic regression analysis were also employed to estimate the effect of attributes on restaurant ratings.

Customer attention, food quality, decor and ambience and value for money are frequently used to define restaurant experience. However, it is shown in this study that the experience in a Michelin-starred restaurant goes beyond the evaluation of those four attributes. Furthermore, the effect of the factors that were identified on customer satisfaction differed depending on the restaurant ratings.

The findings are linked to the context of Spanish Michelin-starred restaurants. It is also assumed in this study that online reviews are based on truthful opinions.

Restaurant managers should primarily focus on customer attention and food quality to achieve customer satisfaction. In addition, those restaurants with an error-free service and a highly appreciated wine list among diners are more likely to achieve the culinary excellence that deserves a 5-star rating on TripAdvisor.

The attributes of the restaurant experience are frequently identified in literature reviews. Research based on text-mining analyses of customer reviews to discover a posteriori the factors that define a restaurant experience is scarce, and particularly difficult to find in the context of Michelin-starred restaurants.